Wiki Speech therapy evaluation spanning more than one day..date to use?

leagle

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I am stuck with what date to use when coding a speech therapy evaluation that took place over more than one visit. Say a patient came in on Monday the 5th and the therapist was only able to partially get thru her evaluation and scheduled the patient to come back the following Monday, the 12th to complete it. From what I remember in coding class, you always use the date that the service was completed, so to me that would mean the 12th in this example. The hospital is having us use the first date....I disagree because what if the patient never returns? We would have billed for a service that wasn't completed and wouldn't have medical records to support the charge. That part to me seems easy...but then the therapist asks "well if I don't bill until the 2nd date, how do I account for my time on the first visit?" Well, I would imagine you would account for it the same way you do now on the 2nd visit since you bill on the 1st, right, lol?

I believe they should be opening their evaluation document on the first visit, filling out as much as possible, and then completing it on the 2nd visit along with adding their charges.

Am I missing something??

Any feedback would be much appreciated. There's not many resources out there, if any, for therapy coding and billing.

Thank you,
Lynn
 
Not sure if you ever found your answer. ASHA is a great resource. When a patient needs to come back for testing that ISN'T a time code (ie 92521, 92522, 92523, etc.), on subsequent visits we bill the treatment code. If treatment needs a pre-authorization, we set it to the date of the first follow up visit so we get paid for that time.
 
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